Amor et Dolo
by V. Odelschvager
Summary: The lives of Nox Academy students are filled with training, tournaments, and triumphs, but the façade is broken when one of its top students is found dead and foul play is the phrase on everyone's lips. As the investigation begins, shadows are cast on the student's lives and secrets come to the surface, turning an average school year into hell for those under the microscope. SYOC.


_Amor et Dolo - A Wolf By The Ears_

Without ocular proof, when a scyther and a dead body hit the ground, you'd never be able to tell the difference. Although at a glance some bipedal pokémon may bear similarities it could be hard to ultimately mistake a pokémon for a person, though the Nox Academy handbook stated on page twenty-two, paragraph seven, that it happens often.

With the sky over the Nox training grounds the shade of a cloyster's shell and the pallid moon casting its light through the dense treetops, illuminating small odd-shaped patches of the ground, visibility was at an all-time low.

A crack shattered the tension in the air. Four students, in the midst of stomping through the woods in search of an elusive scyther to capture and claim brownie points, gave up the moment the attack happened. One of their classmates found their target and was going to make the capture.

The four classmates crashed through the woods, following their ears to the epicenter, but the excitement over their hunt ending faded the moment they all arrived on the scene.

There was no scyther. There was a tree, once thick and tall, but now with a gap the size of a window in its trunk, broken and toppled over. Across the trunk, in a similar state, laid the body of Beau Phillips. The right shoulder and arm of Beau Phillips, his throwing arm, was gone and no trace of it remained. Instead, there was a clean blown away curve of flesh, as if his arm never existed. The curve moved inward from his shoulder and had cleared out a chunk of his midsection, his hip, his upper thigh, and a piece of his calf.

Beau Phillips, sophomore honor trainer on the fast track to running his own fighting-type gym had become a piece of holiday dough that fell under the cookie cutter at the wrong angle. Except there was no flour, only blood, no spices and sweets, only the smell of Beau Phillips's burning flesh, and the heavy silence that death drags behind it.

Their pokémon were there with them, standing by their sides, all of them capable of firing the blast that decimated Beau Phillips, but no one moved. Time passed. Bug and flying-types joined the scene and observed Beau Phillips's body and picked at it, but no one stepped forward to claim their role as the attacker, no one moved to check on Beau, no one panicked.

"Who did it?" one of them asked. "Just say it." His voice cracked and he cupped a hand to his mouth before he started breathing heavily into it.

"We're not supposed to be out here, we'll all be in trouble," another one said.

"Who did it?!"

"Maybe it was an accident, it's dark out."

"They won't think it was an accident, we're out here without supervision. Attacking blindly into the woods at each other, they'll think it was on purpose."

"We are Beau's friends!"

"We were. The truth will come out soon enough, they'll know we're not as close as we pretended. They'll definitely think one of us had a reason."

"Not if someone comes forward."

"What if they lie and say it wasn't them, but points the finger?"

The group fell silent and for the first time their eyes left Beau Phillips and found each other, the fresh idea of betrayal hanging in the air.

"So we stick together, stick to one story. If they ask who it was, you just deny, you never deflect."

* * *

 _Hello~_

 _Let's try this again. I posted this before, but took it down to work on a few things. Welcome to Amor et Dolo, a Pokémon SYOC. The story will be mostly slice of life/school life, but will contain drama/tragedy and hurt/comfort themes, and character submission is open, the form for which can be found on my profile and will need to be PM'd to me with the message title AeD Submission - [Insert Character Name Here]. I hope you'll submit!_


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